Severe Mercy, Severe Joy

There is a particular kind of joy that only grows out of hard ground. Not the easy, weightless kind, but the kind that comes after something in you has been broken open and remade.

This piece takes its name and its heart from a line in Josh Garrels' song Benediction: "joy, it is severe, when the way is rough and steep." That single phrase became the whole idea — that joy and hardship aren't opposites, but companions. That some of the deepest joy doesn't arrive despite the hard road, but because of it.

The tree carries that truth the way trees always have. Rooted in severe mercy. Crowned in severe joy. Every root, every leaf, every line of bark drawn by hand over weeks—because that felt true to how this kind of joy actually grows: slowly, through storms, from something as small as a seed.

We come to know severe joy when the roots of our lives dig deep into God's severe mercy.